guardian.co.uk,
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris and Nick Hopkins, Thursday 22 December 2011
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the French decision, to prosecute people denying the killing of Armenians was genocide, amounted to Islamophobia. Photograph: Burhan Ozbilici/AP |
Turkey has
frozen relations with France, recalling its ambassador and suspending all
economic, political and military meetings in response to French MPs' approval
of a law that would make it a crime to deny that the mass killing of Armenians
in 1915 by Ottoman Turks was genocide.
The furious
Turkish reaction to Paris's parliamentary vote marked an unprecedented low
between the Nato partners.
The Turkish
prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, cancelled permission for French military
planes to land and warships to dock in Turkey, annulled all joint military
exercises, recalled the Turkish ambassador to France for consultations and said
he would decide case by case whether to let the French military use Turkish
airspace.
He said
this was just the start and "gradually" but "decisively"
other retaliation measures would be taken against France. He warned of heavy
diplomatic "wounds" that would be "difficult to heal".
A majority
of the 50 MPs present in France's lower chamber approved the bill which would
make denying any genocide – but implicitly the Armenian genocide – a criminal
offence punishable by a one-year prison sentence and a fine of €45,000
(£37,500). The bill was put forward by an MP from Sarkozy's rightwing UMP
party, but the issue was supported by socialists.
"This
is politics based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia. This is using
Turkophobia and Islamophobia to gain votes, it raises concerns regarding these
issues not only in France but all over Europe," Erdogan said, accusing the
French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, of deliberately courting the large
Armenian-French vote ahead of next year's election.
The French
foreign minister Alain Juppé said he didn't want "our Turkish
friends" to "overreact". Earlier, trying to smooth the row with
Turkey, he dismissed the bill as "useless and counterproductive". He
said Turkey, "a proud nation", should work on its issues of history
and memory, but threatening French criminal sanctions was not the right way to
make them do it.
Under
Sarkozy, who opposes Turkish entry to the European Union, relations between
Paris and Ankara have been difficult. But the Nato allies had been working
together on key issues such as the Syria uprising. Erdogan said Turkey was now
"suspending all kinds of political consultations with France".
A Turkish official
indicated the freeze would not affect the country's membership of Nato, and
that the withdrawal of military co-operation would be at a bilateral level.
Armenia,
backed by many historians and parliaments, says about 1.5 million Christian
Armenians were killed in what is now eastern Turkey during the first world war
in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by the Ottoman government. Ankara
denies the killings constitute genocide and says many Muslim Turks and Kurds
were also put to death as Russian troops invaded eastern Anatolia, often aided
by Armenian militias.
The French
bill criminalising genocide denial must now be put to the French senate for
debate next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.